And 2010 has been declared by the United Nations as the year of biodiversity.  Amidst this fanfare for environmental protection and celebration, there is also news that the International Whaling Commission is considering once again sanctioning the hunting of whales.  As a few species may no longer be on the brink of extinction, so goes the strange logic, why actually let them flourish when they can be pushed back to the brink so easily?   So too, there is something especially troubling in the announcement this week that British Petroleum is not only closing its solar panel manufacturing plant outside of Washington, DC.  While moving an operation overseas to lower costs is a familiar enough tale, the twist here is that having no buyers for the facility, BP actually plans to tear down the plant – as China surges ahead to dominant positions in manufacturing both solar panels and wind power turbines.

It is thus a good thing that the preferred medium for communications at EEMP is not the still camera but rather a movie camera that whirs calmly as its open lens captures an unfolding story.  At EEMP we see not so many discrete or isolated events, but rather a panoply of activities – a fabric of interwoven threads that come together in the wonder of fully functioning ecosystems.  We thus have ambitious plans for new documentary work across parts of east Africa – Rwanda, Ethiopia and Tanzania.  And as one can see from the new maps recently loaded to our website, 71 organizations in 29 countries have now screened “Hope in a Changing Climate” and engaged local stakeholders in discussions around the themes of the film.

And the film, initially aired by BBC World (average weekly audience of 74 million people), has now also been accepted to several major international film festivals, from Sisak, Croatia, to Missoula, Montana, USA.

Recent Festivals:

• Cinema Planeta Film Festival, Mexico City, Mexico, March 9, 2010
• Elliniki Etaireia, Athens, Greece, March 17, 2010
  "Hope in a Changing Climate" was shown in Athens as part of a season of environmental films organized by one of Greece's most respected green NGOs, known as Elliniki Etaireia. The film, subtitled in Greek, drew a lively reaction from an audience of at least 100 supporters of environmental causes. Bruce Clark, a journalist from the Economist magazine, moderated a discussion about some of the issues raised. There was strong interest in the idea that China has things to teach the rest of the world about the repair of eco-systems. Several people noted that the problem of degraded eco-systems was especially acute in parts of Greece. The audience was interested in the role played by ordinary people in rebuilding damaged micro-environments, and in the sort of governance and philosophy that is needed to mobilize people. Elliniki Etaireia intends to show the film in other parts of Greece.
• World Bank Environmental Film Festival, Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 18-25 
  “I just want to let you know that the screening of ‘Hope in a Changing Climate’ last Tuesday was a great success. Around 200 people saw the documentary in Ciudad Cultural Konex, Buenos Aires. I'll send you some pictures soon.”
  
  

  Upcoming Festivals

• George Mason University Earth Week 2010, Arlington, Virginia, USA, Monday, April 26, 5-7 
  Mason’s celebration of Earth Week 2010 features many opportunities to learn about environmental sustainability as well as Mason’s commitment to leadership in environmental research and action. As part of the weeklong festival, “Hope in a Changing Climate” will screen at Mason's Arlington campus. The film will be followed by a facilitated discussion by Jonathan Halperin, Executive Director of the Environmental Education Media Project and Dann Sklarew, Associate Professor with the Environmental Science and Policy Department at Mason.
• Sisak Eco Film Festival (SEFF), Sisak, Croatia, April 2010
  The main cause of the Sisak Eco Film Festival is to broadcast videos and films that promote environmental protection and sustainable development.
• 33^rd Annual International Wildlife Film Festival — Finalist, May 8-15, Missoula, Montana, USA
  The International Wildlife Film Festival is the premier venue for wildlife filmmaking and filmmakers. Often called the Sundance of the Wildlife Film genre, IWFF is an annual gathering where film, television, new media, science and conservation converge.  IWFF was the first wildlife film festival in the world and today, has the distinction of being the longest running wildlife film festival, attracting over 10,000 people from around the world each year.

The story we are telling seems to play well around the world, whether along the headwaters of the White Nile or the Yellow River, in Pittsburgh or Cleveland, in Croatia and Argentina.  2010 looks like it will be quite a momentous year.  Stay tuned.

- Jonathan J. Halperin

Specifically, I have observed that there are powerful long-term evolutionary trends that have provided and continuously renewed the atmosphere, the hydrological cycle and the fertility and productivity of the soils. These trends are principles and they are understandable, measurable and predictable.

The three trends that I have observed and study are:

• The trend toward total colonization of the Earth by biological life.
• The trend toward differentiation and speciation leading to massive biodiversity.
• The trend toward the accumulation of organic matter as each generation of life lays down its body to nurture the next.

There is evidence that these trends are based on billions of years of evolution and as such are extremely consistent, powerful and compelling. Human history can be seen as an accidental experimentation of what happens when these trends are interrupted. When these long-term trends are broken, it changes the positive accumulation of biodiversity, biomass and organic matter into a negative spiral that depletes the earth of the systems that regulate air, water and fertility.

These observations have been subject to peer review at serious academic forums -- such as Rothamsted Research, Oxford University, The Royal Society, The World Bank and the United Nations Environment Programme -- and scientifically they do not seem to be in dispute.

What has been especially important in my research is observing that it is possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems by restoring ecosystem function. This was clearly shown in China’s Loess Plateau, and subsequent investigation in other parts of the world have shown that this is not specific to that region but based on understanding and that it is repeatable. It has also been important that many of the poorest people have visibly changed from being the ones degrading these systems and functions into becoming the solution -- when they are educated to understand the previous negative impacts and the potential positive impacts of their actions.

This is of profound importance for the future of humanity and the planet.

After Mutuma Marangu (Director, Green Resources AS) saw EEMP’s film "Hope in a Changing Climate" broadcast on BBC World, he immediately asked me to share this message in Kenya.

In January, I traveled to Nairobi at his invitation. During this time I was able to share "Hope in a Changing Climate" with several audiences and to discuss the implications of the understanding with Mutuma Marangu and others. This first visit heightened awareness in Kenya of the potential of "Integrated Poverty Eradication and Large-scale Ecosystem Rehabilitation." During the visit, I was interviewed by Jeff Koinange, Anchor and Host of Capital Talk and Chief Reporter for K24, Kenya’s 24-hour All News TV Station.

I also spent three days (Feb. 5-Feb. 8, 2010) in Kigali, Rwanda, hosted by the Rwandan Environmental Management Agency (REMA), where I met with several offices of the Rwandan Government, including the Rwandan Environmental Management Agency, the Personal Secretary to the President and the Permanent Secretary for Science and Technology of the Ministry of Education. I returned to Kenya in March to present and participate in the Kenya Youth Empowerment and Employment Summit (March 2-3, 2010). I engaged in a series of meetings at the Summit, including Food for the Hungry, the Kenyan Forestry Research Institute, and Kenyan Vision 2030 and then departed from Nairobi on March 9, 2010.

These trips brought the subject of "Integrated Poverty Eradication and Large-scale Ecosystem Rehabilitation" to Kenya in a definitive way. There was a great acceptance of the information by all who heard the message. My feeling is that there will be a gradual period of digesting the information and then it will be seen in many ways to begin to permeate the societal consciousness in Kenya.

There is a question of whether Kenya will lead or whether Kenya will follow in understanding and implementing strategies based on this knowledge. Certainly the sooner that Kenya absorbs this knowledge, the better the outcome will be for the country. Based on this understanding, it is clear that there is no future in reducing biodiversity, biomass or accumulated organic matter. That means that firewood, charcoal, dung burning, de-vegetation, deforestation, unsustainable agricultural, unsustainable urban design and unsustainable industrial practices all must change.

The key to making this happen is seeing that this is an opportunity and not a cost. Billions have been allocated for climate mitigation and adaptation from global sources. How much of that will come to Kenya depends on how well Kenya understands and can design projects that implement what I have been describing.

It has been correctly noted that large amounts of labor are needed and that there are large amounts of unemployed young people in Kenya--500,000 high school graduates who will not get college placement or jobs. This is twice the size of those that will find places. Could this be tapped as a "Kenyan Conservation Corps" on the model of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the United States in the 1930s? This type of integrated planning could be very important for Kenya.

I’m very grateful to Mutuma Marangu for bringing me to Kenya and East Africa this time. I’m ready to assist Kenya and the Kenyan people to take up this understanding in any way that I can.

John D. Liu (March 10, 2010)

But it reminds me all of the power not just of the film, but of people working together to change our world.  Beyond Copenhagen, beyond the ten transmissions on BBCWorld, and even beyond the more than 15,000 people who have viewed “Hope” on the internet, people in communities across the globe have been brought together around this film. Using our Discussion Guide, invitation templates, and a set of carefully crafted supporting materials more than 64 organizations in 28 nations have engaged diverse stakeholders in film screenings and facilitated discussions.  The building blocks for our Campaign for Climate Stability, Ecosystem Restoration and Poverty Eradication thus include organizations as diverse as Mikhail Gorbachev’s International Foundation for Survival and Development of Humanity in Moscow, the National Association of Somali Science and Environmental Journalists, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in the Fiji Islands and the GIS department of Idaho State University.  From Israel to India, people have joined the effort to understand and devise solutions to the intertwined thicket of problems that swirl together like a dust storm: destroyed ecosystems, endemic poverty, and destructive agricultural practices.

Citizens acting alone won’t be able to implement large-scale ecosystem restoration projects that, along with safeguarding peatlands and forests, UNEP believe hold the potential to lower carbon emissions by 50 gigatonnes in coming decades.   But political leaders acting alone also seem unable to implement viable solutions to address climate change.  But when leaders listen and lead, when citizens insist on accountability and action, then change remarkable change can happen.

And as John D. Liu reported just now in a call from Nairobi, he has been met with remarkable support and enthusiasm this past week from a wide cross-section of Kenyan social, business, and political leaders.  There is a deep yearning for the kinds of solutions EEMP champions, for solutions that get at the root causes of problems that have festered too long. 

John’s latest thought-provoking piece (Thoughts on Designing Refugee Camps) on improving the lot of the millions of people around the world who find themselves trying to carve out lives in the midst of refugee camps also gets at this question of how important time is in our conception of what solutions work well to address which problems.  I am reminded that as Russia was lurching from one crisis to another after the break-up of the Soviet Union, it was common to hear Russians note cautiously that “there is nothing so permanent as temporary measures.”  While short term, emergency support is of course needed to combat famine, the devastation of natural disasters that have so overwhelmed Haiti, and other short-term crises that erupt, climate change will never be addressed without attention paid to root causes. 

As we work move forward every day with our work at EEMP -- to harness the power of citizens such as the mothers in Taiwan, to take our message to  policy leaders as John is doing in Kenya this week and Rwanda next week – we continue to be sensitive to the immediate needs of people in dire circumstances.  And we stay clear too that our mission calls for attention to a longer time horizon where we aim to demonstrate the viability of solutions that work not only for the current generation but for many generations to come.

- Jonathan J. Halperin

Over the years as I’ve been studying what has caused ecosystem function, it has become clear that our problems are greater than simply egregious carbon emissions in the atmosphere.  Human beings have massively altered the earth over the last several thousand years.  Although our impacts are complex, described simply we have reduced biodiversity, biomass and accumulated organic matter and this has reduced gas exchange from photosynthesis, lowered nutrient cycling from decaying matter, and massively altered infiltration and retention of rainfall, changing soil moisture, relative humidity and microclimates.  All of these impacts are exacerbated by egregious emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Although Copenhagen has not ended in an agreement I don’t consider the meeting a failure.  The inability of the politicians to reach agreement is a stimulus to find functional methods to address our problems that can be agreed to by everyone.  As I have seen and our film “Hope in a Changing Climate” has shown, there are steps that everyone can take immediately to sequester carbon, to mitigate against flooding, drought and famine and to ensure that biodiversity survives into future generations.  Copenhagen has convinced me that we cannot wait for the politicians to “get it”, we have to act immediately to restore as much of the degraded lands in the world as we can.  I think the people of the world are now far out in front of the politicians.  If the top down method is unlikely to succeed then we must act from the bottom up.  When the people show them what is possible I think … THE POLITICIANS WILL CATCH UP.

While the Copenhagen meeting was winding its confusing path toward a minimal outcome it did bring many concerned people together.  Paul Schopf, Director of the Center for Climate and Society at George Mason University and I were able to meet with Rose Mukankomeje, the Director General of the Rwanda Environment Management Agency to discuss collaboration on Research, Development and Training to be based in Rwanda.  We discussed locating a center for scientific excellence in the Rugezi Highland Wetlands to continuously monitor soil carbon flux, in the wetland peat, in biological carbon in herbaceous and woody plants in Rugezi wetlands and the Gishwati and Nyungwe Forests.   This center would be justified simply because of the urgent need for the scientific data but we also discussed using the center as the base for restoration of the degraded lands and training for the next generation of restoration experts.  Because of the unique assembly of people in Copenhagen I was also able to discuss this with Juergen Voegele, the head of Agriculture and Rural Affairs at the World Bank and with Stewart Maginnis and Bill Jackson who lead the IUCN’s Forest Restoration projects, with Kjell Aleklett who heads the global energy group at Uppsala University and with Dr. Jane Goodall, the justly famed British primatologist.

There is a growing consensus around what needs to be done and a growing impatience with the existing institutions.  When the Rugezi Wetlands releases its waters it flows into the headwaters of the White Nile and the Congo Rivers.  There is no doubt that the ecosystem health of this system is of enormous importance for Rwanda and for all of Africa.  There is also no doubt that functional systems in this region are vastly more valuable than the scant productivity that poor farmers can force from the hillsides.  The value of the ecosystem must be acknowledged and as soon as it is the people there will no longer be poor.  This is true in many parts of the world and recognizing it will ensure that the future will have wetlands, flowing rivers, grasslands, and forests.

This is the lesson that I have taken away from the Copenhagen Cop and I think it is a lesson that I hope many can learn quickly.  If we act together immediately, within just a few years we can restore this wonderful landscape to full functionality and physically demonstrate how restoration can provide tremendous benefits for the local people and everyone on Earth.  The collaboration of the partners will provide all that is needed to accomplish this and can help to lead restoration on a planetary scale.

- John D. Liu

Regardless of what does or not come by way of final agreements or statements from the Conference of Parties, beyond this meeting the human response to climate change cannot honestly be described as anything other than a colossal failure.  Some good, particularly around the issues of forests and desertification, will almost assuredly emerge; and those are important steps forward.  But remember, even a stopped clock is right twice every day.

As a species, we have delayed and denied.

As a species, we have procrastinated.

As a species, we have squabbled and bickered when action was needed.

As a species, we have failed the next generation in our refusal to be held accountable.

As a species, we have played a global shell game of avoided responsibility.  It is China’s fault.  It is the fault of the US Senate.  It is Brazil’s failure to protect the Amazon; Indonesia’s fault for allowing peat bogs to drained.  The financial crisis is to blame as it drained needed resources from the global economy.

But let us not, please, add insult to injury by repeating the surreal arrogance of last July’s G8 pledge to keep global temperatures within 2°.  Are we really so wiling to engage in farce that we think we can simply instruct nature to keep the temperature down?  Perhaps, we might also commit the nations of the world to, say, the end of mudslides; let us pledge to eliminate, perhaps, hurricanes; or solemnly agree to ensure a white Christmas.

While it is one thing to be on the wrong side of history, it is quite beyond that to be on the wrong side of geology, to be in denial of how our basic natural systems have evolved over the course of evolutionary time.  It is we, the human species, who need to take responsibility for our own future.  Nature, embraced, is our greatest ally, our greatest resource, our greatest hope for a secure and stable future.  But as nature knows not of politics, politics had best soon learn to know much, much more about nature than our leaders show evidence of understanding today.

- Jonathan J. Halperin

With plans gone awry inside the Bella Center and the Danish Climate Change Minister forced from her post, many of us riding on the Metro to the meeting site in the morning could not hold back smiles as we eavesdropped on two youthful men huddled over a crumpled but quite detailed map.  “Well, I will go first to the peaceful one.  Then later the other one — here.”

And again in the evening riding home, but this time two young women, demonstrators who were among delegates and observers and local people.  But this time they were trading war-stories, both having been arrested and jailed.  They recounted the police, the tear-gas, the noise, the lack of vegetarian food served in prison, and their determination to go back to the next demonstration.

As the hours ticked by and the clock on the official COP15 site showed that time was up  — 00:00 — we successfully extracted the Rwandan delegation to the negotiations (with the help of a Rwandan student at Copenhagen University who met them at the sometimes open/sometime closed Metro nearest both the negotiations and demonstrations).  Accompanied by leaders of global NGOs, delegates from Greece, members of the European Parliament, representatives from Burundi, at least one Ambassador, and heads of multilateral organizations, we held the premiere of “Hope in a Changing Climate” in the elegant yet non-traditional Museum of Geology within the Museum of Natural History. 

But for the automatic activation of the Museum alarms system at 11 p.m., animated conversation that flowed from the auditorium into the exhibits of rocks and gems from across the ages would have continued well into the morning.  The repeated praise and sustained applause for John D. Liu’s pioneering work at EEMP — bringing the potential of ecosystem restoration to life through the stories of people engaged in repairing our damaged earth — were both energizing and humbling.  There is so much more to do to carry this message forward, to drive a new way of thinking, to incubate new restoration projects around the world.  

- Jonathan J. Halperin

But the incentives can also have a perverse effect if they drive the world into a bad agreement, committing parties either to unachievable commitments, deeply inequitable ones, or merely face-saving statements of intention.  While The Kyoto Protocol has usefully driven us as a people to belatedly address the risk of an increasingly unstable climate, so too are its failures useful cautions for what we attempt now.

Again, Steiner, speaking as part of Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s GoodPlanet Film Festival at the Danish Film Institute:

“In the sense that the Kyoto Protocol and Cap and Trade have created an imperative to begin to price carbon, it has been a success story … The difficulty [now] is that as of tomorrow, with heads of State arriving, you suddenly find yourself in this very dangerous zone, that politicians hate to leave without a result. But the groundwork hasn’t been completed. The building blocks are not ready. So you get into very volatile political territory, where people may suddenly either do a deal because they want to have something to take home, and it’s a very bad deal for the climate change agenda — or things get so frustrated that the meeting basically says ‘there is no deal.’ And this is perhaps where it’s up to you to decide if a good deal, a bad deal, or no deal is the preferred option.”

But one positive outcome seems all but certain, unless it unravels in the next 48 hours.  And that is the further inclusion of natural ecosystems into the framework for addressing climate change.  Until now, the vast bulk of attention and procedure has been dedicated to addressing human activities.  But there is clearly increased recognition that REDD (or REDD + or REDD ++, in the arcane of COP15) is going to be central to effectively stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases.  The mechanisms for monitoring, verification and financing, as well as the vast organizational challenges of effective governance and accountability still require intense effort.  But it is now clear that protecting existing forests (avoiding deforestation, as it is known) and planting new forests (developing new reservoir from aforestation and reforestation for natural sequestration of carbon) are going to be more fully recognized and financially valued in the aftermath of COP15. 

Despite the overall outcome of this climate conference, beyond the positioning of failure or success, aside from the deep and real questions of whether we are doing too little too late, it seems likely that we are at a turning point.  As a species, we are today articulating in the clearest of terms a coming of age in our relationship to ecosystems.  Perhaps, we are the end of the beginning of an age were Pogo can be turned on his head. Perhaps tomorrow we will be able to say that while “we have met the enemy,” he is not so much us — today – as our past behavior.

As with the snow that swirled into Copenhagen this morning, so too has the natural role of ecosystems come center stage here in the Bella Center.

- Jonathan J. Halperin

Although there is a raft of details to be sorted across a myriad of issues, two of the underlying issues causing continued discontent are historical. The first major dust-up was driven by a sense (and perhaps evidence) that the COP 15 president, Connie Hedegaard, had cut a deal with developed nations to shift obligations entered into under the Kyoto Protocol into a new treaty under which some aspects of Kyoto could be abandoned.  Charges and counter-charges ensued as to the propriety of walking away from binding treaty commitments (though unratified in the US) as the first step to entering into a new treaty.

And the second historical debate centers on apportionment of responsibility for carbon emissions that are destabilizing our climate.  Developing nations are loathe to take responsibility for carbon they did not emit.  On the other hand, they are also determined not to have their own economic growth limited simply because the developed world pumped more carbon than the planet could handle to stoke the industrial revolution.  Western leaders have generally been sensitive to this moral challenge from the developing world, but also unwilling to give rapidly developing economies a free-ride simply because their historic “moment” may still be in the future.  Thus history, and differing interpretations of it, has a strong hold on the future.

- Jonathan J. Halperin



I was thinking about these two events — agriculture and forests — separated by time, place, sponsors and speakers when Hilary Benn, Britain’s environment minister, today introduced a very useful metaphor.  Looking out across the array of negotiating teams, from fast-sinking Tuvalu to China, he noted that like the fingers of a hand, each is of course independent, but real value comes from working together — as a hand.

So too, agriculture and forestry are distinct appendages within a common physical landscape — and often competing for the very same real estate.  And while specialization may be necessary, it also leads us down the rabbit hole where expertise becomes divorced from the reality it is trying to explain.  What we so often lack is an ecosystem perspective that enables us to look first at the linkages, to understand them, and then dig deeper as needed.

How reassuring then to hear presentations from Benn, Sir Nicholas Stern and Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, emphasizing the need for integrated solutions.  And these solutions will take money, leadership and much improved techniques to monitor the carbon content of soils and roots under changing conditions. How interesting that through carbon dating we can identify glacial movements of long-gone ice ages — but that we still struggle to verify the net carbon sequestered (or released) in a given field in Ethiopia or hillside in Rwanda.  Google’s Open Data Kit (ODK) and Fusion Tables may eventually help us ‘see’ such comparisons, but field-level monitoring techniques need also to be rapidly advanced.

As most of the protestors are released, and the talks continue at the Bella Center, I am reminded of the plans of a young participant in one of our screenings. She intends to spend a year traveling the Silk Road, specifically documenting the condition of nature reserves that abut political borders.  While the climate controlled Bella Center is where the political leaders will be meeting all week, the impact of their words will be felt around the world.  We all dwell within ecosystems that know nothing about politics and borders.  But as the fish and birds, the wind and water, the plants and trees seem not very likely to be much educable about nation-states, let us hope that our understanding of nature’s ways will continue to grow and expand — and quickly.

- Jonathan J. Halperin

(Photos: Lance Kramer)

That the report would focus on the US, generally perceived as having healthy ecosystems relative to many parts of the world, will serve to draw even greater attention to this key set of relationships.

And while Vilsack didn’t respond to questions about guidance he might or might not have given to the US negotiating team, it was clear that the release of this report during COP 15 was intended to be part of the series of signals sent in recent days to demonstrate seriousness of purpose.

Vilseck outlined an effort by the USDA to advance the role of agriculture in addressing climate change by pursuing research alongside adaptation and mitigation measures that would support efforts to expand “scope, scale and impact.”  Emphasizing the link between climate change and food security, he said that while US agriculture may produce “7% of the problem (in terms of greenhouse gas emissions), we think it may represent 20% of the solution.”  In stressing the need to address fundamental problems, he pointedly noted “that we need to go beyond what has been done before” and also “rethink the business model” for agriculture in the United States.

Having watched one of Vilsack’s aides carefully note changes in his actual speech from the prepared, printed remarks she had in hand, I decided the Secretary should also be able to see “Hope in a Changing Climate,” which is the closing event at this very well run and well attended forum.  I gave her a copy of the DVDs that arrived in Copenhagen earlier this week. 

- Jonathan J. Halperin

While the COP (conference of parties) deliberates IPCC (Intergovernmental panel on climate change) reports and analysis, and the critical  importance of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) draws more and more deserved attention, not to mention the need to move projects more quickly through the CDM (clean development mechanism), we run a serious risk of boxing ourselves into a linguistic corner if we insist that everything we do about climate change is either mitigation or adaptation.

Mitigation, of course, is trying to halt global warming and adaptation regards plans to adjust to the fact that it is happening and we need to prepare.   We are a bit, thus, in a position similar to that of the scientist who celebrates her remarkable breakthrough in inventing the universal solvent, and immediately sets about the task to find an appropriate container in which to hold this invention.

“Climate change,” it always does, “global warming,” though some places will become much colder, and the adaptation/mitigation framework embodies mental concepts that are themselves obstacles to solving the problem at hand.  And in some respects, the public is far ahead of the scientific community and much closer to solutions in its failure to embrace phrases that somehow don’t make sense.

Climate is a dynamic system, woven in and through the rain, the sun, the soil, plants and animals (humans included); everything.  So to talk about climate change as something to stop or reverse as if it were the pause button on the video player is really to fundamentally miscast the challenge. The goal is to stabilize our climate, to bring it back into harmony with global ecosystem functions (such as the carbon cycle, or course) that are the cornerstone of our existence.

If we step back for a minute, the adaptation/mitigation paradigm is really quite bizarre.  It posits a type of human response to something the climate is doing to our species.  It posits two competing forces — that bad climate out to get us and a species on-the-run.  That is a very odd formulation, dangerously close to ascribing intent to climate.

Rather than posit human civilization as having to adapt or accept what the climate is doing to us, we need to see the challenge as one of restoring equilibrium to natural systems that have evolved over eons.  Over geologic and evolutionary time, Mother Nature developed tested methods for carbon capture and storage that we are unlikely to surpass.  Why don’t we work with natural systems to stabilize our changing climate?  There must be a reason, but memory fails me at the moment.

- Jonathan J. Halperin

And the contrast, discussing looming global catastrophe in the extreme conviviality of Copenhagen, brings to my memory an idea that was floated around the time of the founding of the United Nations in 1945.  In the aftermath of World War II, when the technology of killing was perfected at a horrifying scale, someone suggested that the headquarters of the UN should be based in the middle of an unrestored Hiroshima. 

It is an idea worth visualizing. 

We forget so easily.

The point of such an idea is not to penalize or make harder the work that so many are doing, tirelessly and jet-lagged, to resolve the most severe of the global challenges.  Few cities around the world could handle such a gathering as COP15 with as much combined grace and efficiency as Copenhagen.  But the thought gnaws at me that me might all be better served were this meeting held  on the Loess Plateau, or in Ethiopia, or any number of other places that both hold out hope for resolving, and are severely threatened, if we cannot manage to stabilize the climate.

- Jonathan J. Halperin

I will be meeting my colleague and partner, John D. Liu, who is already in Copenhagen and the founder of the Environmental Education Media Project.  It is almost exactly one year since he and I first met at an Internews conference in Athens and agreed to work together.  I was inspired by John’s multimedia presentation on ecosystem restoration, based on a decade of field work and camera work around the world.  And John sought assistance growing his organization so it could take his important message to larger and larger audiences of policymakers and citizens.

So, a year later we find ourselves with 12 versions of a new film, Hope in a Changing Climate, an op-ed about our work today in the International Herald Tribune, and a premiere next week at the Copenhagen Museum of Natural History.  In addition, we have two other screenings: at Agriculture Day at Copenhagen University, and at the Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Good Planet film festival at the Danish Film Institute. 

John and I come to Copenhagen as newly minted faculty at the Center for Climate and Society at George Mason University, an interdisciplinary effort headed by Professor Paul Schopf. And through the tireless work of a team of Mason graduate students, we are also supporting facilitated discussions and screenings of “Hope in a Changing Climate” in 20 nations by 48 diverse organizations. They will be using our new Ecosystem Restoration Discussion Guide that is available at our two new revamped web properties: www.eemp.org and www.hopeinachangingclimate.org.

I wonder, watching people go by, like ants guided on specific paths, busy yet not, how much carbon delegates to the conference are emitting on the myriad flights.  What will come from this conference – action, words, inaction, stalemate?  With the new leadership of President Obama a welcome breath of fresh and honest air after the do-nothingness of the Bush Administration, are we really on a new path?  The magnitude of the problem, the global nature of climate change is both daunting and a source of opportunity.  It is like nothing world leaders and citizens have ever confronted.  And therein is the challenge and the opportunity for unprecedented cooperation.

As John Liu has said to hundreds of audiences in his years of work on this issue, we need a species level response, not a national, or bilateral, or even multilateral response. It is beyond all that.  What we aim to do in the coming days, and what is done so powerfully in the movie, is to refocus the debate by placing it in the context not just of a single human life, or even of human history, but more properly in geologic and evolutionary time.  For it is the most fundamental cycles of nature that while profoundly robust are also dangerously out of whack now as carbon emissions climb because of how we use our land, power our societies, manage our water, and grow crops and food.

We have made some ill-advised choices over time, but we have the opportunity to make better choices, to learn, to look out beyond our narrow national interests and to look to the future of our children and grandchildren.  I carry with me pictures of my son and daughter, both under 10, and wonder if we will succeed.  What will we leave for them?  I am, of course, an optimist.  There is after all, hope in our changing climate.

The ants are passing by.  Time for us to join them.  Time for us all to join together.

- Jonathan J. Halperin

Related: Lessons of the Loess (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/opinion/10iht-edmozur.html?) by Paul Mozur